Grocery shopping on a budget

If your family finances can be improved or helped through cheaper ways of buying weekly groceries, there are a lot of tactics you can use. (If you need a helping hand beyond this list, go to my focus page “Where to find food assistance in Monroe County.”)

The Extreme Grocery Shopping approach is not “charity.” It is smart use of the resources you already have access to, but maybe have never used to their fullest potential:

• If you are living on a budget, stop bringing store-bought deli trays and bakery treats to a potluck or a fundraiser bake sale! Stock up when pantry items such as gelatin, canned fruit, cake mix and pudding mix are on special and you will always have a potluck item that can be prepared quickly. (Cookie mix for free? Yes, I’ve done that on coupon + sale.)
• Create a standing pantry supply list of ingredients your family uses on a regular basis. A really frugal / beginner pantry list is posted at Frugal JD. Other examples are at Frugal Village and at Fly Lady. Adjust the recommendations to suit your needs. If you multi-task with tortillas, that goes on the list. If you rarely use cream of mushroom soup, that doesn’t go on the list. These are the products you should buy every time you find good prices, whether you have run out or not.
• Some bloggers keep a price book of their favorite items. Chief Family Officer explains how that is done and how you can benefit.
• Get used to different cleaning routines and supplies. Yes, it’s convenient to use the pop-up disposable wipes, paper towels and static dusting cloths. But limit them to applications where they are the most appropriate (when you are traveling, for example). It is much cheaper to use rags or mops with spray, bottled or home recipe cleaning products for household cleaning.
• Plan family menus in advance so you make the most efficient use of your groceries. Some women’s and health magazines feature weekly or monthly menus with recommended shopping lists. I post a list on the kitchen bulletin board that shows the next two or three days’ dinner plans and who’s going to be home. To help you get organized, Better Budgeting.com has posted spreadsheets that include What’s for Dinner? and What’s for Dinner This Week?.
• Set up and maintain a coupon box. If you need help getting started, I have a post on how to create and maintain a grocery coupon box.
• Talk about coupons and trade tips at Hot Coupon World.
• Learn how your favorite stores handle coupons bundled with other specials such as in-store promotions or rebate checks. An example: if you have a coupon for $1 off two boxes of cereal, and there is a buy one, get one free offer on that brand, you may need to buy four boxes to bundle these two offers together.
• Grow a vegetable or herb garden. A kitchen window or basement window might provide enough space and light for an indoor potted garden.
• If you don’t have a green thumb (I don’t!), you can still get garden-fresh produce. For example, Monroe Farmer’s Market in the 200 block of N. Monroe St. is open Saturday mornings during the harvest season. And the IHM sisters in Monroe have an organic garden that you can join in as a partner.
• If you buy produce at the supermarket, the Lightening blogger has great tips at Reducing the Grocery Budget-Fruit and Vegetables. When you do buy fresh produce, be sure use it quickly. For example, lettuce goes into salad one day, BLTs another day and taco filling another day.
• If you like warehouse quantities, check out Gordon Food Service in Frenchtown Township, which does not require a membership card.
• Share the really big purchases with someone else. On at least three occasions in recent years, my parents have ordered a half-cow from their local butcher, and us siblings bought pro-rated shares of that meat from Mom and Dad.
• The Angel Food Ministries bulk food purchase program is open to anyone of any income level, and has delivery sites at Bedford Church of the Nazarene in Lambertville along with other locations in the Detroit, Toledo and Ann Arbor areas. A Monroe delivery site will start soon. I’ve found Angel Food packages are a great complement to coupon queen tricks. Hillbilly Housewife posts menu recommendations based on Angel Food deliveries.
• The Sense to Save blog has posted a Recipe Cost Calculator.
• The Recipe Finder database at the USDA web site has more than 400 frugal recipes compiled by nutrition counselors to help food stamp families make the most of their grocery budgets. The database includes favorite dishes from several cultures.
• A similar web site is the WIC Works Learning Center, which is a collection of recipe databases aimed at low-income families.
• Another frugal recipe site is sponsored by Bush’s Beans: Vegetable with More: 1,000 recipes with beans!
• How about a “real family”’s approach to beans? See An Ode to the Inexpensive Bean at The Simple Dollar.
• Cooking Healthy Meals from Scratch is a recipe blog written by a Toledo resident.
• When do convenience foods work out better than cooking from scratch? Hillbilly Housewife has a detailed discussion on specific products.
• The Washington Post has this chart with pictures: Stretch Your Grocery Dollars, showing a cartload of groceries one could buy on a food stamp budget for a family of four and how to plan frugal meals with those products. The related article by Sally Squires is How Far Can Your Dollar Stretch?
• The Aldi Queen is a blog dedicated to recipes with ingredients and products you can buy at Aldi supermarket.
• Dollar General’s prices will be even more of a bargain when you bring your coupon box. Yes, DG accepts manufacturer coupons!
• Proctor and Gamble has an eSaver coupon program that can be used in conjunction with a Kroger shopper card. Unilever also has an ecoupon program that you can load on a Kroger card.
• Internet printable coupons get a lot of attention, but here’s what I ran into: the print feature doesn’t work on Macintosh computers! Now, if you do want to check out the coupon sites, Melissa at A Penny Closer has some tips at Printing Cash at Home: My Favorite Coupon Sites.
• You can save a lot of money by participating in the drugstore rebate and in-house promotions. Chief Family Officer has overall tips on The Drugstore Game. Money Saving Mom has tips at Walgreens 101 and CVS Pharmacy 101. Living Almost Large has how-to tips at CVS Extra Care Bucks Explained. On a related topic, BeCentsAble explains Target promotions. And I got started on the drugstore promotions by signing up first for the Rite Aid program.
  
• If you are a military personnel or dependent family member, a military ID card with commissary listed as one of the privileges is your ticket to cheap groceries at Selfridge Air National Guard base. Mount Clemens is a 90-minute drive from Monroe, but it is well worth the trip for a carload of groceries. Take your coupon box, and a cooler in the car to pack your meat and cold items for the trip home. You’ll need the military ID at the checkout line. (Note: I’m not sure how long this commissary will remain open.)
• Stocking up during sales is always smart when your family can use up the product before it expires. In the long run, this approach cuts your expenses. (See “Do you have any cereal coupons?”) Also check out Building Your Stockpile thread at Hot Coupon World.
• The Digerati Life wrote Coupon Tips and Tricks That Can Cut Your Grocery Bill by 80 percent.
• Another Internet resource that gets a lot of attention is The Grocery Game. But if you live and shop in Monroe County, read my post Pros and Cons of the Grocery Game before you sign up for that service.

In the meantime, watch for blog posts that I list under category “groceries”. On the blog, I’m listing sales announcements for stores in the Monroe, Mich., area, my “shopping hall of fame” posts and news headlines about food prices.

Last updated June 22, 2008.